The Canadian government’s telecommunications regulator has had enough of Internet service provider Rogers Communications throttling online game connections. The ISP tried to provide a reason but the government seems unsatisfied with the answer. The Canadian Radio-television Telecommunications Commission has given the company until September 27 to put together a plan to deal with the problem of game throttling.

"Commission staff also requests that Rogers provide a detailed report to the Commission once the problem is resolved, demonstrating that the problem has been fixed," read a portion of the letter sent to the ISP by the commission. "The requested document should include an overview of the solution, how it deals with the "underlying" dilemma, and "a description of the changes made to Rogers' ITMP [Internet Traffic Management Practices] disclosures in order to accurately reflect resolution of this problem."

The CRTC also plans on creating new guidelines "for responding to complaints and enforcing framework compliance by Internet service providers" sometime this week. Critics of this particular ISP think that these new guidelines will make it easier to resolve ISP and game related disputes.

The ball was put in the CRTC's court last year when Canadian World of Warcraft players began complaining of traffic interference during peak traffic periods. A December 2010 letter to the Commission revealed that content-to-client traffic was being mistaken for P2P traffic, and therefore being throttled by Rogers.

Ars Technica has more background information on this story here -- including a response from Teresa Murphy, who is a co-complainant alongside Jason Koblovsky. You may know Jason from his regular blog posts and his occasional contributions at GP.

Comments

Rogers (and Bell) are going to soon have to face up to the future of the internet service. They're too invested in selling other services (such as Phone and Television) that conflict with web-services for them to actually make a stand as a good and reliable ISP. With the increasing availability of web-video and services like Google Voice, it's getting less and less appealing to pay for the obscenely overrated sevices Rogers provides.

Case in point, I recently moved, and dropped Rogers as a provider; they were charging $65 a month for the high speed service I was using, and a $1.50 for every gig over the first hundred of use -- as my fiance and I do everything on the web, we were regularly getting an extra $10-20 on our bill every month, no problem.

Our new provider is charging $10 less a month for a higher speed connection, no caps, and a few other perks. We're now saving about $25 a month; our bill is never a surprise. The connection is just as stable, and it makes services like Netflix functionally free. And we don't have to deal with other anti-consumer policies like this one.

The only reason Rogers and Bell retain their customer base is because they are the biggest companies with the best recognition and largest marketing efforts. And if they don't shape up, more of the little guys are going to tear customers away from them bit by bit until nothing is left.

Shout box

Wymorence: For me it just boils down to the fact that, even at a giant company, when a game comes out annually it just gives it a vibe of being rushed out the door. And god knows Unity sucked some major lemur with all its bugs...03/31/2015 - 4:22pm

PHX Corp: I launched my spotify account today, and I kinda went a little overboard with adding music03/31/2015 - 3:59pm

Sora-Chan: Con't. Games like AC are a pain to someone like me who likes to play games in order. So when a game gets too many releases too quickly, it puts me off. Only exceptions are games that have no interconnected underlying stories like the FF games.03/31/2015 - 2:53pm

Sora-Chan: Wikipedia has rarely let me down on matters like this. But yeah... AC needs a break.. like two.. or three... or eight years.03/31/2015 - 2:51pm

Conster: There's 9 already?! I think I played 1, 2, and the ones inbetween 2 and 3.03/31/2015 - 2:23pm

Sora-Chan: Con't There are now Nine... of just the main entries into the series. There are 13 more in the "other games" department.03/31/2015 - 2:15pm

Sora-Chan: I tried to get into AC. Was having a decent time with the first one, at which point they had already released three titles. Then a fourth came out... then a fifth... the wall kept growing before I could finish the first.03/31/2015 - 2:14pm

Daniel Lewis: I think ubisoft should give AC a break before it's milked to death,and i'm a big fan of the games03/31/2015 - 1:15pm

Daniel Lewis: The only thing said i disagree with is the final quote on Men's experiences are seen to be universal but women are gendered,though doesn't anita say that games with male protagonists are male power fantasies,so in turn both are gendered03/31/2015 - 1:08pm

Daniel Lewis: i found the video to be much better than any of the TvW series and it's about time the positive women are put in the spotlight03/31/2015 - 1:06pm

Daniel Lewis: So feministfrequency released a positive female character video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXmj2yJNUmQ03/31/2015 - 1:05pm

Daniel Lewis: I think the guy who made the direct leak said it was an april fools joke when a real one was announced03/31/2015 - 12:43pm

MaskedPixelante: No way Nintendo would let information like that get out. Remember, they shut down a memoir about the localization of Earthbound by enforcing a 20 year old NDA on the author.03/31/2015 - 12:42pm

james_fudge: Conster: the larger issue is that Ind. does not protect LGBTQ+ people under state law03/31/2015 - 12:11pm

PHX Corp: @MP I think it is confirmed(not an April Fools joke) http://mynintendonews.com/2015/03/31/nintendo-direct-confirmed-for-wednesday-april-1st/03/31/2015 - 12:00pm

Conster: Apparently Pence intends to amend SB101 so denying service isn't allowed - without explicitly protecting LGBT+ and while still allowing the many other things you can get away with now if it's motivated by your religious beliefs.03/31/2015 - 11:53am

MaskedPixelante: http://mynintendonews.com/2015/03/30/rumour-nintendo-direct-on-april-1st/ A supposed full leak of tomorrow's Nintendo Direct, so you can all laugh and laugh about how wrong it is.03/31/2015 - 11:35am